


The Garden and the Queen

by appleheart



Series: Cultural Assimilation Is Sad [1]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Big Sisters, Culture Shock, Family Feels, Formative Experiences, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 20:19:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2081784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/appleheart/pseuds/appleheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Gerudo smuggle their one and only little brother into Castle Town, so that he will be prepared to return as a King someday. In turn, he smuggles himself into Hyrule Castle proper. It ends poorly.</p><p>(OoT-specific.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Garden and the Queen

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr makes me think a lot about Ganondorf and his eight hundred big sisters, and what exactly he must have wanted out of Hyrule.

His sisters are full of wisdom and laughter. They have stored up a century’s worth of knowledge for him: the secrets of sand and water, the ways of wild beasts and the hunt, things of gods and magic. Every word from their grinning mouths is a warning, if he is clever enough to hear it.

Most of their words are about survival. They tell him how to shake out his clothes and bedding for scorpions, where to shelter from a storm. They tell him not to eat the food that trade caravans let fall in their wake when they see bandits on the horizon, which is poisoned nine times out of ten. They tell him not to offend the gods. They tell him not to trust Hylian women.

"They’re pretty in their own way, but every one I’ve ever kissed had blood on her lips."

"Born under a full moon, all of them. You think you keep your secrets, but they’ll see more than they let on."

"I thought she loved me, before I learned she called me her 'pet coyote' among her friends."

"If you can’t catch us when we lie to you, little brother, you’ll have no chance with them. Speak little, listen hard, and believe not a word they say to you."

***

At eleven years old, he is as tall as any of his sisters, and thin as a jackal. They pinch his arms and joke about chicken bones for the stew as they dress him for the journey to Castle Town, to see the fat green land that borders their own and the people that claim to rule over them. The Hylians should know (if they paid attention to desert matters) that a king has again been born to the Gerudo, but his sisters do not want him revealed just yet. He may be a king but he is still a child. He is _their_ child, their baby, their only son. They tease him without mercy, they set his head spinning with their tricks, but they protect him ferociously against the world.

Six of his sisters escort him through the shining white walls, guarding and disguising him at once. He is dressed like them, a veil over his face, his long red hair tied back with beaded thongs. "In another year or two, they won’t be fooled," one says to him, squeezing an arm around his narrow shoulders. "Look your fill, little brother; the next time you walk through this gate, it will be as a king."

***

His sisters have a new warning for him, one he has never heard before.

"If you go too far from us, we won’t be there to save you."

He turns it over in his mind like a shiny new knife, before deciding it has no power to wound. They lie to him often. Perhaps they are testing him, behaving like the Hylian women they warned him about, to see if he remembered. There has never been a time when he did not have his sisters nearby, even when he did not see them; he knows there will never be a time when they are more than a bowshot away.

So when he slips away from them, he does so without fear. They are busy with the bright clamor of the marketplace (the bright silks and blown glass globes, the potted flowers, the coin purses in easy reach and the pale soft-featured faces that flush at a veiled smile) but he trusts they are aware of their seventh sister, their secret son, sidling off on his own.

 Besides, it is in his blood to trespass, as it is in theirs. If he obeyed every rule spoken over him, he would not be Gerudo. 

He has a little magic already, that of the thief and the assassin. It is enough to make the eyes of the Hylians flit over him without seeing. The guards in the town and the castle beyond it pay him no mind, and he walks quiet and gentle as a deer.

It is the castle that he wants. He has trinkets enough of his own, given to him by his many sisters, and the wares on display in the marketplace are no different than those carried by the caravans—it is only more convenient to have them gathered all in one place. He wants those things which never come to the desert, things he has never seen or known before. He wants what his sisters cannot give to him. He doesn’t know what exactly this desire is for, only that it is strong, and that it burns inside of him like a flame.

That hungry flame fuels his magic, and when he reaches the walls of the castle, he puts his hand against the white stone and walks through it like a curtain.

***

The desert fortress is never still. It echoes with voices calling back and forth, the clatter of pots and spoons, the clink of the well chain being drawn up, the patter of footsteps dashing up stairs and down. Everyone is always going somewhere, usually in a hurry. Sounds rattle off the smooth stone walls, and the wind sings through it all in a secret language no one can translate. In the fortress, he has never once felt alone.

By contrast, the Hylian castle is oppressively still. Velvet carpets on the floors and tapestries on the walls swallow all sound. The guards stand stiff as statues at their posts, the plumes on their helmets barely bobbing. He cannot see their eyes. The entire castle holds its breath, as if it startled by its dusty intruder—or, perhaps, as if it were expecting him. He walks quickly, fighting the urge to run. His gaze passes over cathedral halls and treasure rooms without seeing them. They are not what he came to find. He opens doors at random while the back of his neck prickles. He thinks once, briefly, that perhaps his sisters were not lying, and forces the thought away.

All at once he steps into a place so luminous and green that he has to cover his eyes. It seems brighter than the desert at midday—but perhaps that is only the richness of color erupting all around him, and the way the light sparkles off of a thousand droplets of water that tremble on the points of leaves.

The room is not large, but it is so full of blooming greenery that he can barely see the far wall. Three walls and the ceiling are all smooth panes of glass, capturing the sun like a creature in a cage. The air is thick with sweet scents, and so humid he can barely draw breath. He runs his tongue over his lips and thinks: this will never be my desert. All of his flowers are dry.

He lowers his veil and wanders, dazzled, through the planted rows. Even the ground is covered in velvety moss, dotted with tiny white flowers like stars. Other flowers rise up to the level of his knees, licking at the air like flames. Vines spiral up trellises to burst into violet thunderheads at the top. Small trees drip blossoms onto his head and shoulders.

He looks his fill. He drinks deep of the beauty that surrounds him. He inhales the sweetness of generous, unselfconscious life. He bends to cup the fragile blooms in his hands and rubs the delicate softness of petals between his fingers, and his eyes are too full of the next wondrous thing to see the bruised flowers and crushed stems he is leaving in his wake.

***

He has reached the heart of the garden, and discovered he is not alone.

Two women inhabit a paved clearing at the center, where little marble benches have replaced the riotous greenery. (The presence of the paving displeases him. It is typical Hylian foolishness—to take such a wonderful, magnificent thing as a room full of flowers and clear a space for _stones_ in the middle.)

One of the women sits, playing with a small child, while the other stands across from her with a wary eye to the child’s hesitant steps. They look to be the same age to him, and both Hylian, until he sees the tattoos under the eyes of the standing one and realizes that he is in the presence of one of the Shadow Folk his sisters have warned him against.

They are talking quietly, but he stands too far back to hear the words. The child tumbles over an uneven stone and thumps down hard. At once the Sheikah woman sets her back on her feet. He is surprised that the child does not cry. She bites her lip with a look of great concentration and resumes her toddling journey.

The woman on the bench says something to the other, and her soft laughter reminds him suddenly of his sisters. She has long dark hair, straight as a bolt of silk, in a smooth braid down her back. When she raises her head, he sees that she is much younger than he first thought, not more than twenty. She is beautiful, with eyes like wells of clear water, but it is the lines of sadness around them that hold his attention.

Don’t trust Hylian women, his sisters told him. He had not expected to find that warning difficult to follow. Even without a word spoken between them, he feels sure that he could approach this laughing-sad woman and find in her a friend. If Hyrule held more like her, the caravans would not poison their food; his sisters would not be whipped for what they had not stolen.

Distracted by these thoughts, gazing into the pools of her eyes like a seer hoping for a glimpse of the future, he does not immediately realize that the women are staring back at him. The hunger has left him, and with it the magic that kept him hidden. The child has toddled almost to his feet. She stands staring up at him, her mouth open in surprise and her eyes like her mother’s.

The Sheikah woman points to him, and in her hand is a shining knife. "Who are you?" she demands, her voice perfectly audible now. "How did you enter the Queen’s sanctuary?"

He can’t draw a breath; the humid air would drown him. His sisters are nowhere near. He can’t see his future in the Hylian woman’s eyes—only terror. All at once he feels hollow, empty, lied to, denied. He cries out silently to his goddess and reaches for all the magic he can hold, a dry river of fire to carry him away.

***

His sisters find him outside the town, in the open green field where they left their dust-brown horses to graze. He is trembling, his eyes red and raw.  He has braced himself for questions and mocking, but his sisters, who love him, are gentle and wiser than he. They replace the veil over his face to hide the signs of tears. The eldest of them pulls him onto her lap (for all that he is the taller of the two) and holds him while the others offer comfort by a touch on his shoulder, a kiss on his head, or merely by their understanding silence.

They tell him that the castle is in an uproar. The news is that the Queen’s attendant stopped a Gerudo assassin from attacking the Queen. Guards on horseback tore through the marketplace as if they did not much care whom they trampled beneath their hooves. His sisters escaped arrest, all six of them having been witnessed among the shops throughout the day, but the guards drove them out of the city with the butts of their spears.

 They say they are relieved to find him here, unharmed—but he sees them glance toward their saddlebags, as empty now as when they came.

He had not realized that the woman was a Queen. He should have suspected, but the flowers and the light had gone to his head. He had been a fool. The sadness in a Hylian woman's eyes was not for him, and the food that fell from the caravans would always be poisoned.

The hunger growls inside of him; it has had a taste of its desire and now it will never be silent.

He frees himself from the ring of arms that have tried and failed to protect him from harm. His sisters look on him with pity, and for the first time it burns him. He doesn’t feel like their little brother or their son right now; he feels very old, and very alone. He goes to his horse without looking at any of them.

"When I come back here, I will be a king," he tells himself, and this time it is a promise.


End file.
